"Longhorn Beta 1 is still a few weeks away from release. And Office 12 Beta 1 isn't slated to debut until this fall. But that isn't stopping Microsoft from peeling back the covers on some of the new features slated for the pair of products due to ship in the latter half of 2006."

I am not sure, since OSNews is mostly visited by people with a minimum amount of knowledge on computers. While I agree that Microsoft's numbers are just skewed, OSNews' numbers wouldn't be much more representative.

I am not sure, since OSNews is mostly visited by people with a minimum amount of knowledge on computers. While I agree that Microsoft's numbers are just skewed, OSNews' numbers wouldn't be much more representative.

I agree, it's very difficult to get an accurate picture of market share just by looking at any web site statistics.

Not that market share numbers really matter all that much. What matters is what you can do with the OS, which is basically anything you can do with any modern OS. Popularity isn't an argument for superiority (after all, people once believed the Earth was flat...)

I'm happy believing that Linux has roughly the same market share as OS X. It may be true, it may not, but since no one can prove it either way the claim is as valid as anyone else's...and not very important. What matters to me is that my Mandriva Desktop and my Kubuntu Laptop "just work"!

I know OSNews used to keep usage stats. We could probably get a fairly accurate look of Linux usage vs. Windows usage by asking OSNews to provide us with these stats.

I think Microsoft just spouts off these low numbers to turn people. "We'll Linux must not be that good if it only sports 0.031% marketshare."

OSNews probably isn't the best place to look at these stats. I'm willing to bet there are a higher percentage of Linux users visiting this site than say...cnn.com or google.com. Hell, there are probably more FreeBSD users visiting this site than Linux users visiting cnn.com or google percentage wise (just a guess).

But I concur with what the above poster said, although Microsoft could be talking about Linux machines sold, so that the 30 machines you converted to Linux wouldn't count. Counting Linux's marketshare probably isn't going to be ever possible.

I'm pretty sure that the percentage is way higher. I just have to remember the nomber of people that i know with linux a few years ago, and compare with now. Maybe a 800% grow.

I have similar experience, and it is not just the nerds that run it nowdays. I think the big change happened somewhere around the release of the latest Gnome, or perhaps it was all Ubuntu hype that made the trick.

Now it looks good, it just works. Plug in an USB disk and it pops up on the desktop, plug in your digital camera and it automagically opens gThumb for you.

When you show a windows user Ubuntu for the first time you can see in their eyes that they think its cool, and they want to try it. Most of them actually do.
So far I have seen this happen in 3 out of 4 cases this year.

If Linux can raise this much attention in its current relatively unpolished state, what will happen when we can do things like changeing the program menu, or when somebody can convice the developers that directories like /etc/, /root, /dev, /usr, /bin, /lib, /boot, /sbin,... should be hidden by default from ordinary users in the GUI. This would leave them with folders that they actually need in everyday work.

Even if Microsoft is right in its estimate of Linux desktop marketshare (which I very much doubt), this will be a very rapidly growing market in the years to come.

For one, usage stats from a site like OSnews are meaningless, since you get far more oddball OS users coming here. Linux users definitely higher then norm. But you're going to see things like BeOS probably hitting a percent or 2, which clearly isn't the case.

Anyways, if someone wants to get the answer, get some money and pay someone like Gallup to do a phone survey. Thats the only way to do it. But it cost money. MS pays to have polls done, this makes them rather accurate since there not using things like website hits and such, but since they were paid by MS, trolls autothink they poll has been slanted.

Companies have no interest in tweaking a poll (for the most part), If Linux had say 10% market share, MS would definitely want to find that out, especially if they were taking the typical guess of linux being less then 1%,

That is not correct. Slashdot _has_ more Windows users then Linux/BSD/Mac users. They ran browser/OS stars back in the day but removed it because of the humiliation that more than 2/3 were Windows users. Taco's answer was 'I stopped logging it'. I guess there would be more Linux users now than then if they'd make their stats open. Or maybe not? Maybe that's why they're still not making their stats public...

hardly. Our site for the privateer remake got slashdotted back in may. By the end of the day, our total number of visitors ever was 10 times as large as before the slashdotting. The percentage of visitors using Linux went from 16% to 15%. Safe to say about 15% of the slashdotters who visited us that day used Linux then.

I thought it was pretty sad a slashdotting didn't raise our linux percentage at all

Thank god somebody's finally designing something at least somewhat innovative, though. Linux appears innovative at the surface, but it never changes any core beliefs. OS X is more innovative than Windows, and probably longhorn, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I just hope to god Microsoft ditches its bloat-ware everything-in-one-program-whether-people-need-it-or-not philosophy, however.

I would rather say installed base.The fact that more people have downloaded a distro is irritating MS even more because it's not something to get a hold on.So bought or not,every running Linux box with OpenOffice installed isn't likely running MS Office and reality is as usual a bit more flattered presented yet again by the windows watchers.

I've been testing Longhorn Beta for over a week now and wouldn't even consider it pre-Alpha. It is extremly buggy and anything but easy to use. I am afraid Longhorn was too little too late and even more people will jump on the Linux bandwagon before Longhorn could have matured enough to be considered for release by any serious developer.

The past couple days I've been playing around with Longhorn Beta and can only describe it as disasterous even for a Beta version. Besides the facts that I don't see much of the features Microsoft was hyping and that is it not very userfriendly I keep discovering new bugs all the time and it is extremely unstable. I am already fed up with the other versions of Windows and was hoping Longhorn Beta would be better but this is very disappointing and I think now I'll also switch to Linux.

If Linux market share was as low as 0.013, Microsoft wouldn't be loosing their time and money doing propaganda like "Get The Facts" all over the world. Obviously, Linux is a major threat to Microsoft and as usual they try to deny it with cheap propaganda. "There are no americans near Iraque. I triple guarantee you". Remember such claims? Quite close to what Microsoft does.

W3Schools isn't a good source, either, since it's a site for tech-saavy web designers.
Google last published their Zeitgeist about 6 months ago, and they placed Linux below 1% (which only represents desktop use, not servers).

There is a column, "Win .Net", in the OS Platform Statistics table. I have never seen .NET listed as an operating system. I thought .Net is a language. Are there OSes built with .NET, the way UNIX was with C?

>>There is a column, "Win .Net", in the OS Platform >>Statistics table. I have never seen .NET listed as an >>operating system. I thought .Net is a language. Are >>there OSes built with .NET, the way UNIX was with C?

Its a server version of Windows. You must remember that microsoft hat the bad idea of calling everything .NET untill NOBODY knew what it meant.
Now we tend to call just the platform .NET, but microsoft still hast the tendency to slap .NET on unrelated things. Just like Adobe CS and Macromedia MX.

FYI, Google Zeitgeist stopped publishing OS market share data after they figured out that their Linux statistics were bogus. The problem was that most Linux computers were counted as "other OS", not linux, resulting in a too low number (1%) for linux.

Unless you happen to work at Google and have insider information, there's no reason to believe what you just said. In none of their statements on the matter did they specify that their reason for removing the OS stats was that their Linux figures were inaccurate - they merely said that they were trying to focus only on fun statistics.
Your conclusions are entirely based on the musings of pro-Linux bloggers, not on facts.

Please, lets not around insinuations. The fact remains, Google statistics are based upon reading what the browser tells them; If the user has their browser setup to tell the server that the client is running Windows + IE, even though they maybe running Linux + Konqueror, then of course you'll have problems. Same goes for Opera - Opera by default is setup to be recognised by servers as IE 6/Windows.

Statistics based on sales and web browser statistics are faulty at best; either because the browser misidentifies itself or the statistics are screwed because of the nature of the website - if it is a higly technical site, the greater the number of *NIX clients, where as if it were one dedicated to home crafts, it will have a higher frequency of users using Windows or Mac clients.

Please, lets not around insinuations. The fact remains, Google statistics are based upon reading what the browser tells them; If the user has their browser setup to tell the server that the client is running Windows + IE, even though they maybe running Linux + Konqueror, then of course you'll have problems. Same goes for Opera - Opera by default is setup to be recognised by servers as IE 6/Windows.

Of course this is possible, but as I said in my previous post - how many people do you know that change their UA string? Seriously, I know none. I don't even know a single reason why you might want to do this. Opera did this because Microsoft (msn.com to be exact) was serving them a bad page. That "problem" has been long gone. Try setting your UA in Opera to Opera and browse msn.com, then tell me if there is _anything_ wrong with the site.

Statistics based on sales and web browser statistics are faulty at best; either because the browser misidentifies itself or the statistics are screwed because of the nature of the website - if it is a higly technical site, the greater the number of *NIX clients, where as if it were one dedicated to home crafts, it will have a higher frequency of users using Windows or Mac clients.

I already mentioned in the previous post that the most searched tech term on Google is 'linux' followed by 'opensource'. It would be hard to belive that non-savvy users know what linux or opensoruce is. Then in my previous, previous post I mentioned Slashdot which ran stats about browser/OS. Again, Windows users filled more than 2/3 of the site. But your statement still holds. Of course buyflowers.com will have more non-savvy users, and therefor more Windows users than kernelhacks.org but I gave an example that if since last year Linux user stats would quadruppled (4x1%) they would still be well lower then Windows 98, which is IMHO a shame, because Windows 98 is crap nowadays.

Honestly I can't think of a better way to get real (or as close as possible) browser/OS stats than looking at Google's logs.

The problem was that most Linux computers were counted as "other OS", not linux, resulting in a too low number (1%) for linux.

So what. Even if we count 'other' as ALL being Linux (Doubtful) then it's still 10% off win98. I like my Linux, but desktop adoption is pretty much stalling now that those folks who would/could switch, have switched. Sadly I don't think MS has anything to worry about at all right now. They have too much mind-share, and Linux distros (As a recognisable brand) are way too diverse to make a big impression on it.

>>I like my Linux, but desktop adoption is pretty much
>>stalling now that those folks who would/could switch,
>>have switched.

I don't belive this, I've seen people switch lately that I would never have considered switching. I belive that the growth rate is just as slow as ever, and will continue at the same pace. The diference is that wen you have less then half a percent 0.2% ever 2-3 month looks nice and once your market is about 1% look you gowth is at 0.4% every 2-3 month people go ITS EXPONENTAL!! Well its not, that was just the hype. Now we are back to 0.2% every 2-3 month and at 3.something% and it isn't so impressive. That dosn't mean growth is over.

There's a good reason why google statistics under-represent linux. The non-savvy users I know, tend to use google for everything -- even replacing the location bar. For example, in order to go to OSNews, they'll type "osnews" in google, everytime. By contrast, more savvy users will remember the URL and type "www.osnews.com" in the location bar, knowing that their browser's auto-completion feature will make that easy.

There's a good reason why google statistics under-represent linux. The non-savvy users I know, tend to use google for everything -- even replacing the location bar. For example, in order to go to OSNews, they'll type "osnews" in google, everytime. By contrast, more savvy users will remember the URL and type "www.osnews.com" in the location bar, knowing that their browser's auto-completion feature will make that easy.

Sorry to say this, but that is the most retarded argument ever. It's quite the contrary. The computer savvy users tend to use Google for everything while the non savvy users don't even know what Google is (the really, really non-savvy users), because their start page is set to msn.com. Every opensource program I know of that links or uses any search engine, uses Google.

I consider myself a pc savvy users and I use Google for almost everything. As you gave an example - I don't type in the URL if I don't have it bookmarked, I search it using Google. I almost haven't touched other search sites, except for Yahoo which I use for images.

The problem was that most Linux computers were counted as "other OS", not linux, resulting in a too low number (1%) for linux.

So what. Even if we count 'other' as ALL being Linux (Doubtful) then it's still 10% off win98. I like my Linux, but desktop adoption is pretty much stalling now that those folks who would/could switch, have switched. Sadly I don't think MS has anything to worry about at all right now. They have too much mind-share, and Linux distros (As a recognisable brand) are way too diverse to make a big impression on it.

I don't want to talk about why Linux isn't a success on desktop, but I just wanted to point out that Google listed Linux explicitly on their Zeitgeist. Using the web archive I was able to see the last Zeitgeist that also listed OS share.

This is from July 2004 representing stats for June 2004, exactly 1 year old.

Operating Systems Used to Access Google - June 2004

Linux: 1%
Windows XP: 51%
Mac: 3%

1 year ago, there were more Windows ME users than Linux users (ouch). Even if the share has double, no trippled... hell quadruppled over this 1 year period (which I _strongly_ doubt), there are stil more Windows 98 users than there would have been Linux users.

Anyway, don't want to start a flame war here, just wanted to point out the facts. Yes, the facts, not just some guy's prediction about how many Linux users there are.

"Facts" are only as good as the method of testing. Even Google does not claim that Zeitgeist is a good measurement for these sorts of things. Doing proper testing is hard enough even when you're being serious --- do you honestly think something that isn't even attempting to be a serious survey is going to be accurate? Take, for example, the fact that Google is inaccessible in China (because of the firewall). How many Linux desktops are there in that land of 1 billion people?

"Facts" are only as good as the method of testing. Even Google does not claim that Zeitgeist is a good measurement for these sorts of things. Doing proper testing is hard enough even when you're being serious --- do you honestly think something that isn't even attempting to be a serious survey is going to be accurate? Take, for example, the fact that Google is inaccessible in China (because of the firewall). How many Linux desktops are there in that land of 1 billion people?

I agree, but when it comes to something like OS stats or browser stats I think the method provided by Google is _very_ reliable. For example as I already mentioned, everyone knows Google and I think it would be very hard to find a person that could honestly say 'I've never visited Google'. I think it is safe to say wihtout any excuses that Google is probably the best method for doing a research of this kind. If you would use MSN for this research however, that would probably be biased (as the default start page in IE is MSN).

They never gave a reason of why they took it down, but most people believe that it was either because they are not a research company (that is a valuable information to some people) or because of a potential suit against them if anyone would use this info for a serious business decicion.

About your question about the accuracy of this survey; Tell me, what exactly is not accurate/serious about it? Almost every site keeps track of it's users (OS, browser, language, country). They probably have some 1000+ hits per minute. In fact, this method is even more accurate than doing a live questionary, because you don't have to question the questionaries answer. The user agent string is right there and 99% of users don't know what it is or how it is changed. And, I have never met a person who would change it's UA string (except the Opera guys, but they are a minority here).

Someone was talking about the possibillity that computer savvy users might not use Google -> the number one tech term searched on Google in May 2005 was 'linux' with 'opensource' following close. And if that's not enough, Google could also be logging this stuff via thousands of sites that use Google ads.

For example as I already mentioned, everyone knows Google and I think it would be very hard to find a person that could honestly say 'I've never visited Google'.

Google doesn't track people. It tracks computers. The difference is significant. How many Linux desktops are sitting in a lab or corporate environment where users don't surf the internet? I (and every other programmer in the place) used Linux, on a desktop, for my job, but I never visisted Google with it. Indeed, I had a Windows machine next to it dedicated to doing powerpoint or internet. Archiesteel's point about the IP is also true. I'd add to that that Linux is used disproportionately in academia, and universities tend to have large IP blocks that don't require much reassigning.

About your question about the accuracy of this survey; Tell me, what exactly is not accurate/serious about it?

Its assumed inaccurate unless reasonable evidence can be given of its accuracy. Judgements of accuracy, in the scientific world, require evidence. They require analysis of confounding factors (and boy, depending on the browsing habits of people is a confounding factor!). They require assessments of the sample size, assessments of measurement error, etc. This survey has none of that --- it's surveying the way a programmer would do it, not the way a scientist would do it.

The user agent string is right there and 99% of users don't know what it is or how it is changed. And, I have never met a person who would change it's UA string (except the Opera guys, but they are a minority here).

I'd guess that 90% of users on Linux are saavy enough to change their UA string. I know I did it for quite some time. Lots of sites check (especially older sites), check the UA and mistake a non-IE browser for an outdated one and reduce the functionality. Then there are things like banks that outright check to see if you're running IE and don't let you in otherwise.

Your everyone uses google statement is very flawed. Many people infact don't use it. I know many of us only think of google, but a ton of people still use MSN or yahoo, or other.

Furthermore, the amount people go to google is very variable, some may only use it here and there, others non stop. Not everyone finds the need to search for things. Or maybe they use the computer for non web things, such as at work.

You simply cannot get a accurate picture of OS usage through website hits. A site like google would also show more linux usage then MSN.

To use the internet to get a picture of OS usage is like trying to use a camera to take a picture of itself, it just doesn't work, you have to get an outside view point. Thus why I suggest actual phone based poll of random people. It the only way to get a non-bias'd sample, and a actual correct answer to what OS the person uses.

The Google Zeitgeist is not an accurate reflection of OS market share. There is actually a simple reason why Linux is under-represented, and that has to do with the fact (yes, fact, not predictions) that Linux users as a whole use broadband connections a lot more than Windows users as a whole.

There are two main reasons why Linux users favor broadband in greater numbers: first, the majority of Linux desktop users are techno-savvy (since Linux, at least according to its detractors, is "too complicated for Joe User). This is a demographics that tends to see high-speed Internet Access as a necessity. The second reason is that most new computers ship with winmodems, which have been kind of problematic on Linux until recently.

Broadband connections tend to stay up longer, and as such the IP adress will often last for days - much longer when using cable. Modem connections, on the other hand, mean new IP addresses each time. This means that Windows users, who proportionately (and absolutely) have more narrow-band users, are in fact over-represented (since the Google Zeitgest was based on web records identified by IP addresses, not cookies).

There are other factors (i.e. browser who fake their identity and that of the OS, for examples). All in all it makes for an inaccurate figure, and Google did the right thing in removing it.

"Wrong. They had over 95% on linux or *BSD, 3% on OS X, 1% on wiwndows and 1% on other OSes"

It's refreshing to know that Linux people *still* have to resort to outright lies to make their platform of choice seem like the be all and end all of operating systems, instead of relying on truth and reality to bring attention to themselves.

Well....just use what you like. But a close friend of mine who works at Fermilab in Chicago is switching to Linux! Won't show up on any "statistics." But get this...her Ph.D adviser told her that "REAL astronomers don't run Windows..."

But if you like Windows, use it. The Linux? Use that! BSD, UNIX, AIX, OS-2, DOS, whatever turns you on!

But 0.013 Percent? That's rediculous. You can't trust ANYTHING that company says!

IDC in 2003 put Linux at 2.8% of the desktop market. Even Gartner in 2004 put it at 1.3%, and that's considering their estimation that 80% of PCs that get shipped with Linux get Windows installed on them. That's a big assumption, considering that in some parts of the world (Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America), Linux is installed on 10% or more of the computers sold.

A lot of stats are event driven.A user that decides to give Linux a try has at least thought about certain issues wether they are representative for whatever or not.Fact is that the vast majority of non-windows users use their OS out of free will.Would be interesting to see what their interests are in general opposed to the average windows user.

So the logs itself are possibly correct but the prime is
what does it scientifically proove?Can you distil a representative OS usage statistic from those figures?I doubt it.

"Aaron Siego from the KDE project in his blog on www.planetkde.org has calculated that if MS is right, there are 78,000 linux desktop deployments. "

Welcome to statistics. This means that, actually, if their survey has a +/- of 0.5%, up to 5m people could be using Linux. And 0.5% is a ridiculously accurate survey.

So let's stop debating something this stupid. It's obvious that Windows is more popular on the desktop than Linux or Mac by several orders of magnitude. I don't even understand why MS executives ever even mention Linux or Mac. They should just focus on getting Longhorn out. We the Windows developers of the world want .NET 2.0, Avalon and Indigo to finally get deployed.